The future of Xbox is bright, and it's everywhere

Gamescom 2015 was a blast for Xbox fans. Just as E3 was before it. Microsoft keeps floating the phrase, "the best games line up in Xbox history," and it's probably true. After a flaky launch for the Xbox One by anyone's standards, under Phil Spencer's stewardship things are going in the right direction.

And that direction is out. Xbox is finally becoming something bigger than the box that sits under your television. Gaming is important to Microsoft, and Xbox is its brand. Everywhere.

There have been smatterings of it outside the console for a while, like Xbox Live Achievement support for Windows 8 and Windows Phone games, and the now revoked Xbox branding for Microsoft's music and video services. With the removal of the latter, Xbox is now exactly what it should be for Microsoft. It's all about the games.

The big push really began in January when Spencer appeared at Microsoft's big Windows 10 event. It was the launch of Xbox on Windows 10 and while it all sounded grand, as the months have passed the vision has become so much clearer. Phones, tablets, PCs, consoles, HoloLens, Xbox is going to be everywhere. Cross-buy, cross-play and game streaming are but the beginning.

Take this quote from Spencer in a recent interview with Polygon as an example:

"I think when we look back on Xbox five years from now or so, I think Windows itself will be a critical component to the success I think we can realize of Xbox itself — and gaming will be a critical component of the success of Windows. I really believe that. When we say 'putting gamers at the center,' that's different than putting a piece of plastic or a specific device at the center."

Our recent trip to Cologne for Gamescom helped further put this into perspective. The vast space that was the Xbox booth lined with both consoles and Windows 10 side-by-side. Windows wasn't shoved away in a corner, it was right there alongside the biggest new titles Microsoft had to show. Games like Fable Legends and Gigantic playable together, on both platforms. The only difference, your preference for a controller or keyboard and mouse.

Windows 10 is a big step forward for Microsoft in so many spaces. It's allowing the company to do things that it, nor anyone else has done before. Sure, Sony has dabbled with game streaming, but unless you own a PlayStation and at least one other Sony product, it's useless. How many more people already have what they need to stream Xbox One games? A Windows PC. Sony can't boast what Microsoft is able to do with its games on Windows 10. No-one can.

It's also going to become, I believe, less important to focus on how many consoles Microsoft sells versus Sony. And that's because of the platform. In the same way that a smartphone is a way to deliver Microsoft services to your pocket, the Xbox One will be a way to deliver Xbox to your living room. With Xbox as the games platform available here and on hundreds of millions of Windows 10 PCs around the world, who really gets the bigger marketshare?

And let's not forget that as of Windows 10, official Xbox peripherals, including the forthcoming Elite Controller, are compatible out of the box. Just plug 'em in and away you go.

We're only at the beginning. There's so much to look forward to that we do and don't know about. The new Xbox One experience powered by Windows 10, cross-play games like Gigantic, Fable Legends and Killer Instinct, not to mention Halo Wars 2 in 2016. Engineers have told us that yes, they'd love to reverse the Xbox One game streaming feature, but whether it happens or not is still an open question. The Xbox app on Windows 10 will get better every month and we've got things like Crackdown 3, leveraging the power of the Microsoft cloud, to look forward to.

To sum up, I heard this phrase while at Gamescom that I think says everything. What if you could imagine a future where there weren't Xbox One games and Windows games, there were just Xbox games.

Reader comments

The future of Xbox is bright, and it's everywhere

the author is wrong ... the XB1 should not be about gaming only. Everything today is about combining/consolidating devices and media. In time (short order), the author will see that Microsoft had it right but the timing of its introduction was wrong,

I've been saying this since the Windows 10 January announcement. Console sales for Sony is great but think about how many billions of dollars and marketshare Apple has with the App store and across devices. At the end of the day the value of Xbox games will rise with each iteration but Sony's value is limited by default due to it simply not being the owner of the vast Windows platform.

The future is xbox. Not xbox one and windows 10. 95% of people who have an xbox one or ps4 don't game on pc. That's a fact by the figures of game sales. So if all of microsofts first party games in the future are on pc and xbox one simultaneously it wont hurt the console side one bit. This notion it would comes from Sony fans who frankly don't game on pc anyway. Its just internet fanboy bs. Combining xbox into windows 10 and console gives Microsoft a much bigger following than Sony can only dream of. That is what Sony are really worried about.

Consumers should focus on "now" not "future". "Does this device / service, satisfy my needs now?", it's quite pointless throwing money at something hoping it might become what you need it to be (unless you throw so much you get direct control, but you are not really a consumer at that point anyway).

It's not a streaming-war. You are talking about just streaming a game (from a windows Pc maybe?) to a tv through a device. It's about delivering games and gaming services anytime/everywhere independently by the device you are using. It's a little different and yes only Microsoft can achieve this goal.

Now I've read the article, I agree the future really is bright, device agnostic software whether it's games or apps is fantastic. I've never owned a console since my original PlayStation 1 but I do play a lot of PC games and games on the phone, if I can hook up a controller and play "console" games that just gives me more games to choose from, and choice is very nice!

I like the passion MS' getting things done since the XBox One & Windows 10 announcements. They are really putting things to the table. Trying to stand in line with words and on top of it satisfying most of their customers and followers.
To me, it is less just the gamers side which I am interest in than more the multi media, entertainment and those good stuffs around it. Days ago one reader stated "ONE to rule them all!!!" ...underlining the "OneMicrosoft" Philosophy with those words, this is where my interest are heading. The future of MS: Doing (nearly) everything with everything and Continuum (on desktops) and keyboard & mouse integration (on Xbox) are hopefully just the tip of the ice berg.

"It's also going to become, I believe, less important to focus on how many consoles Microsoft sells versus Sony. And that's because of the platform. In the same way that a smartphone is a way to deliver Microsoft services to your pocket, the Xbox One will be a way to deliver Xbox to your living room. With Xbox as the games platform available here and on hundreds of millions of Windows 10 PCs around the world, who really gets the bigger marketshare?"

This statement doesn't make any sense whatsoever, you still need an Xbox One to stream games to a PC. So exactly how are the hundreds of millions of Windows 10 PC owners going to be playing these Xbox One games without owning an Xbox?

Basically the number of Xbox Live users on both consoles and PC should eclipse the number of users on Sony's consoles. So it no longer becomes a question of how many consoles Microsoft has sold but how many people are using Xbox Live as a service, especially paying Gold members. The trick is to get PC gamers to pay for Xbox Live. Not going to be easy considering the open nature of the PC and all the available alternatives for messaging, chatting, and playing online. If anything the PC gamers on Windows 10 will make for a nice inflation of the number of users using Xbox Live. Will be great for when they have to compare against Sony's Playstation Network users.

That's the direction.Don't forget that Xbox One is probably the last "hardware" console, in 2020 we will have a virtual console with Xbox as a service with games playable everywhere through Microsoft cloud. I believe that at Redmond they're preparing to realize this vision, a vision that Sony isn't able to achieve in any way struggled to view gaming only in an old fashion way and in my opinion Sony for services, games and innovation isn't relevant for gaming anymore. Xbox/Spencer/Microsoft are making an amazing work to bring gaming to the next level.

That's for sure but they are missing the whole situation praising Sony just for the huge sales, but as a gamer I don't care about this. I care about features, services, accessories and most of all Games. I can forget the rest but where are the great games that made PS a great gaming brand in the last 3 gen? Microsoft not only is pushing its console services/accessories/features side, not only is delivering huge exclusives that as a gamer I won't miss, but has a vision of the future of gaming, a future supported by its huge infrastructure (Azure,Datacenters,...) that Sony completely miss, they don't even own the Psn's servers, they rent them. And most important today Sony hasn't the money to push anything to its users, anything that is really relevant for the platform they own today and tomorrow.

Logistics wins wars, and the Azure cloud far exceed's any other company's data infrastructure (except maybe the gov., but they use MSFT), and are ready for the future. Nadella and Spencer have the future in mind, and I'm really liking it.

You have to remember that still today Sony has a net loss of 1 billion $, and has to ditch other divisions (highly probably the next will be phone-xperia) while Msft has in cash almost the double of the value of the entire Sony. Last but not least Xbox One is selling more than a success console like Xbox 360 in the same timeframe. So it's right saying that at this point isn't relevant anymore talking about who's selling more just because sales in this gen aren't clearly declaring the winner: Msft is selling more x1 than x360 and is giving amazing services/games/accessories to its customers, ps4 is selling more but this will not save Sony from its financial problems and that's why is giving to its users nothing but promises about a greatness that after 2 years nobody is able to see and is far than ever.

Even rats know this. Stop watching over and over ps4 ads and "in-engine" cgi of games without any launch date and look at the facts. Look at msft/sony financial balances, look at the lot of exclusives coming to Xbox from the next week till holiday 2016 all with gameplay footage, look at win10 on Xbox one and at the new blazing fast dashboard,look at Cortana, look at dx12, look at the new accessories, look on why xlive is far better than psn and ask yourself why on ps4 you pay the same crappy online that is free on ps3, look at ea access, look at the native/free/offline/full-features xbox BC and ask yourself why you have to pay again a ps3 title that you already own and have to be always online to play in streaming-only through psnow, look on how supported is Xbox one with features coming over and over while on ps4 I'm not able to play a mp3's cd or install games on an external hdd. Just open your eyes and you'll find that there is nothing to source about or do you need that someone tells and proves that sky is blue to be able to know that?

I hear the iPhone is launching in September. ;) To your comment I say, who cares? Windows 10 Mobile has an experience no other phone can come close to, especially if you own an Xbox and have Windows 10. It. Just. Rocks. I'm never switching back to iOS/Android icon boringness and cheapness! :)

going to buy an xbox one this month but i really need to know if for example im installing a certain game and suddenly the electricity go off on the xbox one. does it affect it? (We are suffering from not having electricity in our country) lol